The Something and the Nothing
by aerodynamics
Summary: Maybe there is a little bit of something through the nothing. One-shot.


**Disclaim: **I don't own; I borrow.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Flames are welcome. I'm not a pussy. Read with an open mind and take it for what it is, which is slash.  
><strong>Dedication: <strong>Alive At Last and alsonny.

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><p><strong>The Something and the Nothing<strong>

_Spring, 1965._

The air is cold and prickly against his skin. He watches Buck over the top of his beer as the cowboy settles back in his plastic chair and his orange, tailless tabby rubs against his leg.

He thinks it's too quiet. Last call was hours ago and the music long since shut off. Just them left outside to talk about the day and the perpetual nothing they both seem to be sinking in. Buck with his failing stint in rodeo and him with his repetitive, going-nowhere-fast, rinse-and-repeat life. It's the kind of thing that brought them and will keep them together; and it could very well be the death of them.

"Ain't it past your bedtime?" Buck hangs his head over his chair, smiling at the sky. "You're too young t' be stayin' out, runnin' around all goddamn night."

He gives Buck an impassive, disbelieving look. "You're just old."

"Is that what ya call it?" he asks, hands folded over his stomach. "Old?"

"Twenty-four sounds pretty fuckin' old to me, man."

Bucks scoops up his cat and shakes his head, listening to the tabby give a low growl in protest. "I'm nearly as old as your mom."

Placing his beer on the table, he scowls and swallows hard. "She says hi, by the way."

Buck tips his hat and nods. "And a howdy-do to the missus."

"She misses you," he says, staring somewhere over Buck's shoulder. "Says it ain't the same without you around."

He looks down at his lap, then off to the side, picking at the label on his beer. He doesn't like thinking about Buck and the coming and going of when things used to be good. Back when Buck used to hang around, because there wasn't anything better to do and no bar that needed tending. He and Buck had the world at their fingertips and everything was at their disposal. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; nothing was safe.

But that changed when Granddaddy Merrill died and Buck was left to play keeper. There was the bar and the stables with their patrons and their problems, and since then, he's had no choice but to take a backseat and watch Buck take on more than he can handle. Sometimes he wishes he could help, but Buck comes from a long line of stubborn Texans and Wyoming cowboys that believe in getting things done by the sweat of their own brow. There isn't room in Buck's life for anything beyond what comes in the afterhours, these minutes of being together almost like they used to, when they were more friends and less business partners.

"A lot can change in a year, huh, Dal?"

He watches Buck lean forward and the tabby jump from his lap. "Yeah, no kiddin'."

"You remember what your ma used to say." Buck flicks him in the knee and grins. "Change always comes bearing gifts."

"I ain't into no hippie shit tonight, Buck," he mutters, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. "Had enough'a people yappin' at me about changin' and growin' up."

"You got all the time in the world to grow up, Dal," he says. "Don't rush somethin' you can't get back."

"Who says I'm rushin'?" He scratches his nose and shrugs a shoulder. "If I got time, why not take it?"

Buck nods and smiles, throwing his hat off to the side. The wind picks up and licks at the landscape, rustles the leaves and hums through the tall grass. Despite the cold, it's a nice night, crisp air, refreshing where it needs to be. Makes him feel like he has forever to do anything he damn well pleases. He could sit for the rest of his life, in the dark, with all the air and the lightening bugs, if he wanted.

He's sick of rushing around all the time, always going and never stopping or knowing where he'll end up. At times he feels like he's running in circles and that Buck is right. He needs to slow down. He's young. He has the rest of his life ahead of him.

"C'mere." Buck motions him forward with a finger, sighing.

He leans forward and lets Buck slip his fingertips under his shirt collar, kissing him slowly. It's all tongue and teeth and warmth that makes something familiar stir in his stomach. He almost forgot what it was like to want Buck, to feel him like this. There's no discomfort in it, no hesitation. Maybe it helps that this has been going on for a while, since they were so much younger and so much more reckless, and they know how the other works. They know the fear and the desperation, but there's the trust in that neither of them will talk. This is a heavy secret that will remain as just that—a secret.

He's been thinking about this a lot and having a particularly difficult time accepting it as the rarity it has become, this sometimes-if-he's-lucky thing. All these ifs make him feel as if he's walking on eggshells—if he's lucky, if Buck has enough time for him at the end of the night, if there's nobody around and if they're feeling especially restless or brave, or maybe just plain stupid.

Curling his fingers in Buck's hair, he breathes against his mouth and looks up at him through his eyelashes. He can see something raw and animalistic behind the haze, something Buck usually keeps so well concealed behind his aloof exterior. It's unusual and so unlike him, and it's in the moment that Buck sweeps his fingers along his bottom lip that he knows all these weeks of suppressing a very basic, almost primitive need have been weighing on him. He knows there won't be any games tonight, no playing hard to get, just the revival of something long lost and almost forgotten.

He places his hand over Buck's and presses his cheek into his palm. The roughness feels like home, like this is the only place he's supposed to be and Buck is the only person he's supposed to be with. And through the growing separation, there is a glimmer of hope, a silver lining around the masses of the grey that hang overhead. It isn't in his nature to be optimistic, but he thinks that maybe, if this can happen more, he can pull Buck back in. Because in a lot of ways where the platonics outweigh the sexual, Buck was his first. Before the hillbilly wormed his way into his life, he forgot what it was like to have somebody care about him. He feels he might be losing that, and it's the first time he's truly understood desperation on an extreme level.

Nipping at Buck's palm, he can't hide his smirk as he slides out of his chair and onto his knees. The wind chimes out front ring out through the empty spaces of silence, and he shudders as he feels Buck's fingers on his skin, hears the creaking of the nearly ancient balcony under his weight. And as Buck pries at the button on his jeans and he lifts his hips to leave himself exposed in ways no sane, moralistic person would ever agree to, he knows he can't continue to let the nights in which this happens to be so few and so far between. He sinks down in his chair, head hanging over the back, staring at the few straggling stars that haven't quite disappeared yet. His breath fogs in front of his face and hitches when he feels Buck's mouth on him, and it's all warm, warm, warm.

He tangles a hand in Buck's hair, goose bumps rising on his skin as Buck exhales heavily through his nose, and he can feel it on the top of his thighs and his lower stomach. An emasculating sound catches in his throat as Buck hums around him, and he wonders how he went so long without this, without coming back sooner.

Closing his eyes, squirming in his seat, he remembers the first time, when he and Buck started this. It had been a long time coming, and maybe a product of boredom and curiosity, both being so sure at the time that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and not in the sense of opportunity. It would happen once and be pushed to their back of their minds, never to be thought or talked about, like a bad memory that only happens for the purpose of being forgotten.

But that one time thing proved to be a reoccurrence, happening whenever they were alone and that curiosity that made them wonder how far they could push took hold. It got too far too fast, and neither of them had the sense to stop it, although he'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it. But then his thinking was obscured when Buck would get his hands on him and touch him in ways that he couldn't have fathomed, even on the outermost edge of his imagination. And with the obscuring came a recollection, a flooding of memories that bubbled up from the deep and brought forth the realization of a similarity he knew he was subconsciously seeing in Buck; and that made the stopping impossible.

He chokes on the sound he makes as Buck slings his leg over his shoulder. His mind spins back through the years he's been unsuccessful in repressing, back to Lindsay Callaway and Archie McCallister, and the gang they used to run in New York. And he remembers being with Lindsay like this, always at night and always in the dark. Lindsay was rough and careless, but always with his best intentions in mind—meaning well without ever really doing the right thing. That's what he sees in Buck. He knows that Buck has only every tried to do right by him, even if he doesn't always go about it the right way.

That's what makes this so wrong. It has little to do with matching anatomies and God's word and everything to do with their individual selfishness. Selfishness in that he wants to keep Buck close and for himself, and again in that Buck is hoping to prevent him from leaving and doing something stupid, because if he ends up dead, it falls on him.

Fisting at Buck's hair, he pulls his head back and tries to find an even breath. Buck kisses him sloppily, desperately, shrugging his leg off his shoulder and pulling Dallas to his feet as he stands. And in a matter of seconds that run into each other, he's bent over the railing, Buck slick and hot and inside of him, bunching his jacket and shirt between his shoulder blades.

The heat that ravages through him is instantaneous.

**XX**

It's over. He bites at the back of Buck's hand and lets himself shake, aware suddenly of the closeness and the frost on the balcony. The sky is purpling, stars gone, and there's moisture in the air, sticking to him on the inside and the out. He feels a thickness settling in his joints and in his blood.

"Hey..." He swallows and leans his head back on Buck's shoulder, pants still open and shirt still bunched. "I guess I oughta take off, huh?"

Buck hums and mouths at the side of his neck, tightening his arms around him. "You ain't goin' nowhere, cowboy."

"Mm, then I reckon you're makin' breakfast." He rubs his nose on his sleeve and tilts his head back enough to grin up at Buck.

Maybe there is a little bit of something through the nothing.

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><p><strong>PS: <strong>Reviews would be lovely.


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